When policemen, soldiers and officials in
Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room
of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as
doctors tended their wounds.
In fact, many of the wounded were almost
certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a
member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed
43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has
revealed.
"He was called Dr Louay and when the
terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them
off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief,
told The Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which
increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."
Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign
over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard
working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in
any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.
He was particularly willing to assist in
the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and
1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were
rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed
how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic
young colleague.
Dr Louay was finally arrested only after
the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was
captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated
men should do such a thing," said Col Jaff.
The murderous work of Dr Louay is symbolic
of the ferocity of the struggle for the oil province of Kirkuk. The dispute
over its fate is the most important reason why the political parties in
Baghdad have failed to create a new government three months after the
election on 15 December. The Kurds, expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with
Arab settlers by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on 10 April 2003. They
have no intention of giving it up. "We will never leave Kirkuk," said Rizgar
Ali Hamajan, the former Kurdish peshmerga (soldier) who heads the provincial
council. "It is part of Kurdistan."
He recalls that when he was 18 months old,
his parents fled with him from his village north of Kirkuk moments before
the Iraqi army destroyed it.
But Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister,
has frustrated Kurdish demands, enshrined in the new constitution, for Kurds
to be allowed to return to Kirkuk and Arabs settlers to be removed to their
original homes. The Kurds expect a referendum in Kirkuk that would lead to
the province joining the highly autonomous Kurdish region ruled by the
Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq.
For the 1.9 million Kurds, Turkomens and
Arabs of Kirkuk province, oil has brought few benefits. They live on top of
at least 10 billion barrels of oil which was first exploited in 1927.
Despite that, people wanting to buy petrol in Kirkuk wait all day in queues
of battered vehicles. "It is the most devastated city in all Iraq," said
Mohammed Othman, deputy head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the most
powerful Kurdish party in Kirkuk.
All Iraqi provinces were seriously damaged
under Saddam Hussein but few on the scale of Kirkuk. Sinister mounds in the
fields mark where Kurdish villages once stood before they were destroyed.
Often the Iraqi army poured concrete into the village wells to prevent
people returning. Saddam Hussein also bulldozed four districts in Kirkuk
after the failed Kurdish uprising in 1991. Between then and 2003 at least
120,000 Kurds and Turkomens were expelled, in addition to those forced out
in the previous 40 years.
Some Kurds have returned, but not to a land
of plenty. In the old sports stadium in Kirkuk, hundreds of families are
squatting amid the garbage and sewage. The guerrilla war continues at a low
but persistent level and the Arabs are not going to leave or be marginalised
without a fight.
Smoke was rising over Kirkuk this week as
children set ablaze tyres to celebrate the Nowruz, the Kurdish spring
festival.
Kirkuk is not a place where many people
would like to live - but the battle to control it may yet destroy Iraq.
When policemen, soldiers and officials in
Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room
of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as
doctors tended their wounds.
In fact, many of the wounded were almost
certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a
member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed
43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has
revealed.
"He was called Dr Louay and when the
terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them
off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief,
told The Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which
increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."
Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign
over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard
working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in
any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.
He was particularly willing to assist in
the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and
1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were
rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed
how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic
young colleague.
Dr Louay was finally arrested only after
the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was
captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated
men should do such a thing," said Col Jaff.
The murderous work of Dr Louay is symbolic
of the ferocity of the struggle for the oil province of Kirkuk. The dispute
over its fate is the most important reason why the political parties in
Baghdad have failed to create a new government three months after the
election on 15 December. The Kurds, expelled from Kirkuk and replaced with
Arab settlers by Saddam Hussein, captured the city on 10 April 2003. They
have no intention of giving it up. "We will never leave Kirkuk," said Rizgar
Ali Hamajan, the former Kurdish peshmerga (soldier) who heads the provincial
council. "It is part of Kurdistan."
